‘You can get a lot of money for home care, Carl. I’ve looked into it. A nurse will come several times a day. It’s a simple matter. You needn’t be afraid.’
Carl looked at the floor. ‘Hardy, I don’t have the right set-up for something like that. My house isn’t very big. And Morten lives in the basement, which isn’t actually legal.’
‘I could be in the living room, Carl.’ His voice was hoarse now. It sounded as if he were fighting hard not to cry, but maybe it was just his condition. ‘Your living room’s large, isn’t it, Carl? I just need a corner. No one has to know about Morten in the basement. Aren’t there three rooms upstairs? You could just put a bed in one of them, then he could still spend his time in the basement, couldn’t he?’ The big man was begging him. So big and so small at the same time.
‘Oh, Hardy.’ Carl almost couldn’t say it. The idea of this behemoth of a bed and all kinds of medical apparatus in his living room was more than frightening. The difficulties would split his home apart – what little of it remained. Morten would move out. Jesper would be carping constantly about everything. There was no way it could be done, however much he might wish it – in theory.
‘You’re too ill, Hardy. If only you weren’t in such bad shape.’ He held a long pause, hoping Hardy would release him from his anguish, but he said nothing. ‘Get a little more feeling back first, Hardy. We’ll wait and see what happens.’
He watched his friend’s eyes slowly close. The busted hope had snuffed out the spark in him.
‘We’ll wait and see,’ he’d said.
As if Hardy could do anything else.
Not since his first, green years in the homicide division had Carl got to work as early as he did the next morning. It was Friday, but the Hillerød motorway was devoid of traffic for several long stretches. The officers arriving in the garage at headquarters slammed their car doors sluggishly. The clocking-in desk smelled of Thermos coffee. There was plenty of time.
Entering his basement was something of a shock. A ruler-straight row of tables in the corridor, nicely elevated to elbow height, bid welcome to Department Q’s domain. Oceans of paper were lined up in small stacks, apparently sorted according to a system that was bound to create some problems. Three noticeboards hung in a row on the wall with various clippings from the Rørvig case. On the very last table Assad lay in a deep sleep, snoring in the foetal position on a small, lavishly decorated prayer rug.
Further down the hall, from Rose’s office, came a noise that at best could be described as a Bach melody set to unrestrained whistling – all in all, quite an organ concert.
Ten minutes later Rose and Assad were sitting before him, cups steaming, in the office which Carl, the day before, had called his, but now almost couldn’t recognize.
Rose watched as he removed his coat and draped it over the back of the chair. ‘Nice shirt, Carl,’ she said. ‘You remembered to put the teddy bear in this one, I can see. Well done.’ She pointed at the bulge in his breast pocket.
He nodded. It was to remind him to shoo Rose on to a new, unsuspecting department when the opportunity presented itself.
‘What do you say then, boss?’ Assad said, making a sweeping gesture round a room where nothing seemed visibly out of order. A joy to behold for Feng Shui fans. Clean lines, the floor included.
‘We got Johan to come down here and help us. He came back to work yesterday,’ Rose said. ‘After all, he was the one who set everything in motion.’
Carl tried to put a little glow into his frozen smile. It wasn’t that he wasn’t pleased. Just a little overwhelmed.
Four hours later they sat at their respective desks waiting for the Norwegian delegation to arrive. They all had their roles to play. They’d discussed Johan’s list of assaults and had received verification that two easily identifiable fingerprints found on one of the Trivial Pursuit cards matched those of the murdered Søren Jørgensen, and another one, less well preserved, matched the sister. Now the question was, who had taken the cards from the crime scene? If it was Bjarne Thøgersen, then why were the cards in a box found at Kimmie’s house in Ordrup? And if others had been in the summer cottage beside Thøgersen, it would really be a radical departure from the court’s interpretation of events at the time of sentencing.
The euphoria spread all the way into Rose Knudsen’s office, where Bach’s mistreatment had now been supplanted by a concentrated effort to dig up facts about Kristian Wolf’s death, while Assad tried to get leads on where a ‘K. Jeppesen’ – Kimmie & Co.’s Danish teacher – now lived and worked.
There was quite enough to do before the Norwegians came.
When it got to twenty minutes past ten, Carl knew what that meant.
‘They’re not coming down here unless I fetch them,’ he said, setting off with his briefcase.
He trotted up the rotunda’s stone steps to the third floor.
‘Are they in there?’ he shouted to a pair of his weary colleagues, who were busy untying Gordian knots. They nodded.
There were at least fifteen people in the canteen. Besides the homicide chief there was Deputy Commissioner Lars Bjørn, Lis with her notebook, a pair of alert young blokes in boring suits who Carl guessed were from the Justice Ministry, and five colourfully dressed men who, in contrast to the rest of the gathering, received him with polite, toothy smiles. One point for the guests from Oslo-stan.
‘Oh my, if it isn’t Carl Mørck, what a pleasant surprise,’ the homicide chief exclaimed, meaning the opposite.
Carl shook hands with everyone, including Lis, and introduced himself extra clearly to the Norwegians. He himself didn’t understand a lick of what they were saying.
‘Soon we’ll continue the tour in the lower chambers,’ Carl said, ignoring Bjørn’s glare. ‘But first I would like to quickly explain my principles as head of the newly established unit, Department Q.’
He stood in front of the whiteboard, the notations on which they’d apparently been discussing, and said: ‘Do all you guys understand what I’m saying?’
He noted their eager nods and the four scallops on Lars Bjørn’s dark blue tie.
For the next twenty minutes he walked them through the Merete Lynggaard investigation, which the Norwegians – judging by their facial expressions – were well acquainted with, and topped it off with a brief account of their current case.
It was clear the chaps from the Justice Ministry were unacquainted with the latter. They’d never heard of that case, he figured.
He turned to the homicide chief.
‘During our investigation we’ve come into the possession, just yesterday, of highly unambiguous evidence that at least one member of the gang, Kimmie Lassen, can be connected directly or indirectly to the crime.’ He outlined the events, assured everyone there was a reliable witness to his removal of Kimmie’s box from the house in Ordrup, and watched as Lars Bjørn’s look grew darker and darker.
‘She could have got the metal box from Bjarne Thøgersen. She lived with him!’ the homicide chief interjected. True enough. They had already discussed that possibility down in the basement.
‘Yes, but I don’t think so. Look at the date on the newspaper. It’s from the day that Kimmie, according to Bjarne Thøgersen, moved in with him. I believe she folded it up and hid it because she didn’t want him to see it. But there may be other explanations. We can only hope we track down Kimmie Lassen, so we can interrogate her. To that end we will request an all-points bulletin be sent out, plus reinforcements of a few men to monitor the area around Copenhagen’s central station and shadow the drug addict Tine and, not least of all, Messrs Pram, Dybbøl-Jensen and Florin.’ Here he glanced at Lars Bjørn with a venomous glint in his eye before turning to the Norwegians. ‘Three of those pupils who were once suspected of committing the double murder in Rørvig. They are now well-known men in Denmark,’ he explained, ‘who today live as respectable citizens in the upper echelons of Danish society.’